GA-Hardware has a new interview with 3dfx's Alf Covey. They talk about the Voodoo4 & 5, Napalm, sales of the Voodoo 3, Glide, and the T-Buffer/FSAA features of the VSA-100 chip.

Uhoh, it looks like just about all those V5 benchmarks that have been coming out on the net might have been wrong. According to this post on 3dfxgamers and this post on AnandTech (and his messageboard)there was a problem with the V5 driver installs that was hurting performance by as much as 100%! (According to AnandTech) How in the holy hell did people miss this? How did 3dfx not notice? Here is one of the many people who have tried the new install: (Thanks FatalSync)

Prior to this, I was getting 44.4 fps on Q3 timedemo1, 1280 resolution, 32 bit color and textures, all details set to max, FSAA off. After, I am getting 60.8fps. I'm shellshocked, to say the least. I ran the benchmarks many, many times. Keep in mind that AnandTech benched the Creative Labs GTS (overclocked) at 54.4fps in Q3, same settings.

Apparently the regular install is just putting in a generic Voodoo driver instead of the V5 specific driver. I'll give this a shot over the weekend guys, right now there isnt much reason to consider a V5-5500 aside from FSAA capabilities, this might change things. Although I have my doubts. :)

7pm update: Ok it looks like this is indeed a real issue, but it only impacts some installs. I'll find out if this had any impact on the Shack benchmarks over the weekend and will update them if necessary.

3dfx has released some new beta drivers for the Voodoo3 3500 cards. You can snag them here for Windows2000.

Voodoo3 owners might want to grab those new Voodoo5 drivers that are coming out, it looks like the drivers work and you'll get a bit of a FPS boost.

In The Trenches has an interview with 3dfx's Bubba Wolford talking to the senior PR guy there about all kinds of hardware accelator topics, such as sub-pixel jittering, tile-based rendering and T&L. Thanks Jeremy.

NTCompatible has beta Voodoo 5 drivers for Windows 2000, so if you already picked up one of these mofos, download it spanker.

The guys at BrokenPixel have a quote from a MS rep calling the possibility of 3dfx getting in on the XBox a "groundless rumor"

Over at 3D-Unlimited is an interview with 3fx's Bubby Wolford, asking all kinds of things related to the Voodoo 4 and 5.

Guru 3D has a ten question interview with 3dfx's Andrew Humber, discussing the Voodoo 4 and 5. Humber mentions the V5-6000 should be out next month.

pimpium sent word of this interesting document that relates to the merger of 3dfx and Gigapixel. Apparently, Gigapixel got a contract with Microsft where they will try and get a superior graphics chip out before June 2001, after which Microsoft may excercise the option to drop NVida.

GigaPixel entered into a development agreement with Microsoft on February 18, 2000 to develop a highly advanced graphics chip design for use in Microsoft's soon-to-be-released "X-box." <snip> In early March, Microsoft advised GigaPixel that it intended to cancel the development agreement with GigaPixel and use another provider's 3D chips and technology. On March 31, 2000, Microsoft and GigaPixel entered into a release agreement under which Microsoft paid to GigaPixel the up-front development fees of $14 million as provided by the development agreement. The release agreement severs the proprietary development relationship between the companies and provides that GigaPixel will use its best efforts to deliver by June 2001 a non-proprietary sample of a product similar to the originally specified design. The non-proprietary sample is intended to demonstrate the features and performance of GigaPixel's advanced graphics chip technology. <snip>

Since we had the goofy NVidia is neeto article earlier today, well here is your 3dfx is neeto article. I have to cringe when I see the phrase "simply owned" in a press release though.

Here is something new, leaked 3dfx drivers! Actually I've been told they came off the 3dfx FTP but werent intended to be released until later this week. Word is there is quite a performance boost. You can grab the V3/V5 drivers for Win98 or Win2K here.

There's a repost of an interesting newsgroup post by 3dfx chief scientist Gary Tarolli over at The Pulpit, where he talks about how hardware T&L can decrease the longevity of a videocard, instead of increase it. Here's a snip from his argument

So why would a Voodoo5 have a longer life span than a card with T&L? One reason is because it's feature-proof, as strange as that may seem. Hardware T&L cards like the GeForce have their feature set pretty much frozen. For example, the GeForce supports lerping between 2 matrices from what I understand, and no more. Developers basically cannot use this feature, and require 4 matrices at a minimum. When APIs support this, the GeForce will have to fall back to software T&L or not expose the feature. The Voodoo5 uses software T&L all along and thus can implement any feature that comes along. Basically hardware T&L will accelerate (and even that is questionable) today's features only. Once new features come along, these cards will either not support the feature or fall back to software t&l. Note: this is for gfx chips that are hardwired, ie. not microcoded, heavily microcoded chips can implement most new features in microcode. So I would argue that hardware T&L does not increase longevity and can actually shorten it.

update Jack - Now before you make all sorts of rash judgements about what he's saying, go and actually read the entire post. While I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Gary, I must say that this snip does not do his argument justice.

Couple of bits of 3dfx news. Firstly they have released a couple of new images of the V5-6000 with some design modifications. (Here are some pics of the old design) you can look at. Brian Burke has informed me that the cooling system will be replaced with 'something much cooler' as well. Secondly the V5-5500 has resumed shipping (Thanks PimpStick) and will be on shelves on June 9th is the promised date.

Kyle from HardOCP decided to stir the poop pot a bit by forwarding an email sent out by an NVidia representative with a quick quip about the Voodoo5 delay. The NVidia rep forwarded the PR about the Voodoo5 delay and included this: "Hence our argument about shipping product versus non-shipping products. I believe we were on the shelves on April 30th?" Well, obviously 3dfx knows they goofed on the release, however Brian Burke of 3dfx sent off into this lengthy email response he forwarded.

SavageNews is carrying a new interview with Alf Covey of 3dfx talking about the Voodoo5 boards. Its more along the lines of 'why should I buy a Voodoo5?' type of deal.

Over at The Pulpit, Reverend has put up Voodoo 5 Quake3 benchmarks using the 1.1 reference drivers. It seems there's a big FSAA speed difference with 16 or 32-bit desktop when using the "Normal" settings. The Shack Benchmarks were done with a 32-bit desktop.

After the big goofup at 3dfx with the Voodoo5-5500 delay there is a lot of speculation going around on if the V5-6000 monster will actually ship within the next few months. As most people probably remember the delay between the V3-3000 and V3-3500 was fumbled a bit and took quite a while. Well, according to 3dfx all other products are "still on schedule". That being the case, then we should be seeing the V5-6000 boards by this time next month. The word 3dfx was giving at E3 (according to Anandtech) was June 15th. While you are pondering that crazy $599 price tag you might want to have a look at this Tech-Report article which gives one of the most accurate looks at the technology Ive seen.

Now, looking at the benchmarks/comparisons between the GeForce2 and V5-5500, (example chart)the GF2 has more than double the MTexels/second fill rate of the V5-5500. If the fill rate were the bottleneck/limiting factor then you would expect the GF2 to come out with framerates of approx double. Bummer though, that isnt the case. Memory bandwidth is becoming more of an issue. How fast will the V5-6000 be? Really tough to tell. 3dfx isnt exactly known for stellar OpenGL drivers. I saw it running at WinHEC a little while back and my professional opinion is 'fast'.

Combatworld has a look at the Voodoo5 6000 that I forgot to link a while back. They have a first hand look at the next card from 3dfx which we're all sure will be delivered on time.

VoodooExtreme got a quick email from Alf Covey of 3dfx with word on the delay of the Voodoo5 boards (and follow-up). It looks like they have confirmed that there is a problem and have a test in place to catch all the boards with the problem.

We have identified the problem. Yes, there IS a problem. [snip] we expect to be able to resolve this very quickly.

Most of the local stores have been told by 3dfx that the delay is going to be 2 weeks.